Scam E-mail Spoofing Western Union on the Prowl

According to the reports from MX Logic released via its security blog on 27 May 2009, yet another deceitful, scam e-mail pretending to arrive from Western Union appears to be currently circulating all over the Internet.

Reportedly, the new fictitious e-mail seems to originate from the Support Team of Western Union.

The uninvited e-mail, arriving in users' inboxes, addresses the recipient as "Dear Client!" Thereafter it states that the recipient's money transfer sent on March 18, 2009 hasn't still been collected.

Hence, according to the agreement contract with Western Union, the money transfers that aren't picked up within 15 days of dispatch are to be handed back to the person initiating the transfer. And to collect this undelivered money, the recipient of the e-mail must take out a print of the invoice given as an attachment and deposit it with the local Western Union office, the e-mail explains.

Finally, the-mail thanks the recipient for his attention.

Meanwhile, commenting on the e-mail's text, security researchers said the con guys have drafted it extremely sophisticatedly such that it appears fully official to the recipient. Yet another factor to note is that it does not specify where exactly to submit the printout.

Thus, many of the e-mail's recipients, desperate to know what amount of money they could get if they visited the local Western Union agency, go ahead with clicking the attachment.

In truth, the researchers at MX Logic Threat Operations say that at the moment they are keeping track of about 100,000 of the latest Western Union e-mails every single hour.

Meanwhile, with phishers and spammers continuously targeting reputed financial institutions such as Western Union, it means a tough time for security experts to halt vicious activities.

However, to prevent from being trapped into such Internet scams, specialists at MX Logic stated in their security advisory that if any consumer had any questions regarding a transaction with any vendor, such as Western Union then he must refer to the vendor's tracking number provided for that transaction's verification. Also, the user must either call the vendor directly or visit its website for the purpose.